BleepingComputer.com: Dsl

What do people think of Damn Small Linux?

I am using it to make this post on a very old laptop that I had and it runs really well.

Please leave any comments as long as they stick to the rules at bleepingcomputer.com

Hay there ComputerWhizz7
I always liked DSL ,even though its not the most user friendly, to me anyways, used it as "live only" for about 6 months (give or take) as my sole OS at the time, on a AMD 350k6 with 128mb sd100 ram and 4mb video, worked like a charm, was fast and rock stable, saved my settings to a floppy that restored them at boot and was fairly happy untill my motherboard started acting up at which time I got a new box that was pre-installed with Linux (I later installed PCLOS over it) Which ver. are you using ? Had most of my experience with 3.1 (started with 2.2) , have tried 3.4.x and 4.0.x as well. It seems to be comming along nicely although on the 4.0x and up I switched it back to fluxbox instead of JWM. If you're looking for a fast and light surfing set up it's hard to beat IMO . If you want Bleeding Edge look elsewhere, if your just want "teh interwebs" then look no more. USB worked for me as long as I had it pluged in before booting. (you can set up e-mail, sylpheed, if you want , I tried it just to see if it worked, it did, but used my web mail back then mostly) I didn't use the "MyDSL" for much other than the rcfirewall to turn on the fire wall , gave me full stealth if I recall , Even though Firefox is at 1.0.6 , with java and java script off and not allowing cookies as a rule it passed all the security tests I took. (plus I tweaked a few "about config" settings) .
Since I started using PCLOS I've be come "fat and happy" and don't feel the need or want to mess around with the others much.

I've used DSL a few times and I like it, but wouldn't use it for a main operating system on my main systems. However it is great on a system that can't/has trouble running other flavors of Linux.

I believe it's an awesome distro. It has alot of features for the tiny amount of space it requires, with a graphical UI and the ability to run all forms of webservers on the most ancient computers to lurk the corners of peoples homes.

I have used it for a long time, since one of the earliest releases. It does take time to get used to, but so do all operating systems.

I personally haven't found a download site that works (or maybe it's me)
I tried three different CD's I downloaded yesterday and none work on
either of my machines......It loads and then looks to have a mosaic type
background so that I can't read any of the commands etc.
Any suggestions or direct locations of a good download site?

I've always heard that it's just been optimized for size but not necessarily speed. I've used it under QEMU but never as an actual OS. It sounds fun though.

joe883, on Feb 24 2008, 05:00 PM, said:

Have you been here ? ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/dis...nsmall/current/
or http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distri...nsmall/current/
towards the bottom pick "dsl-4.2.5.iso" , Just DL'ed it (48.6mb) no problems but haven't tried to burn it (out of cdr's)
you can also get the current 3.x version as well in dsl-3.x/
HTH

If I've done this right I'm using DSL to reply.
I'll fool with this a while tomorrow.....neat and
small. Amazes me..Thanks

I tried two different versions of DSL and they both
work on my old computer but not my newer and faster
one. It seems to load until you'd expect a screen to show
up but nothing happens.....could be that it's an LCD monitor?
Anyway, thanks for the two sites.

joe883, on Feb 24 2008, 11:23 PM, said:

Possibly, I don't have a LCD so I don't know what to tell ya. If you get nothing at all I'd suspect it's a driver issue, Good thing is though that DSL is more or less optimized to work on older "stuff" (16mb ram min, 64mb ram Recommended, according to the wiki)
Have fun and you're welcome